


you're clarity to me

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, Chill XV, Consent, First Kiss, Fluff and Feels, Getting Together, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Oath of Allegiance, Romantic Fluff, Small Gestures of Affection, Timeline What Timeline, Training, gladnisweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 04:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12904521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Gladio and Ignis have a very frank and very small conversation about their places in the world that they are rapidly growing up into: but they also have a very frank and very small conversation about what they want to be to each other.(And honestly speaking: small conversations are just as important in shaping the world as grand speeches. Both of them are aware of this.)





	you're clarity to me

**Author's Note:**

> I just learned about Gladnis Week last week, and I'm trying to be good with my time and my energy around the demands of holiday-work, so: this is my story for these two, because they are cute and because I love them so.
> 
> The inspiration for Ignis here comes from a series of gorgeous art pieces by hinoe-0 on Tumblr: credits [here](http://hinoe-0.tumblr.com/post/158261557413), [here](http://hinoe-0.tumblr.com/post/164404311778), and [here](http://hinoe-0.tumblr.com/post/166350514568).

Bells, bells ringing out in the world, in this narrow world of scarred desks and scuffed chairs and scratched blackboards, in this soaring world of graceful winding staircases and classrooms flooded with light, and he quickly sorts through the books that he needs and the ones that he needs to leave behind.

He should have gotten to his feet at the first stroke, at the first peal, and he had been too busy rereading a familiar paragraph, and he couldn’t regret the lingering. Sentences coming to life for him, like old friends now, the careful strings of words and feelings and images that sprang into his mind every time he took them in, and he could almost trick himself into thinking that from somewhere very far away he could catch the deep musk of roses on the faint breezes of the midsummer: roses that could not grow anywhere near here, where this particular library overlooked the school gardens that were thirty levels below.

But: the bells, and their harrying song -- he threw the last of the books that he had already checked out into the rucksack that slumped at his side and he started running, and he wished he could leap heedless and reckless down the multitudes of steps that would take him down to the levels devoted to the different physical education disciplines, but no. That was for another time, a time that was coming closer and closer, his future laid before him and filled in with painstaking detail the moment he’d drawn his first breath, and that time was not now.

What was chasing him was the appointment he hadn’t scribbled down in the notebook where he kept ragged notes: where he wrote about the days that passed in a haze of lectures and the riffle of pages, the quiet scritch of pens across paper and the furtive back-and-forth of all kinds of notes passed from classroom to classroom, the school’s gossip and all its backhanded conversations passing him by.

An appointment in another student’s hand: short words, very much to the point.

Flowing from the inked lines: tiny flourishes and curves and hooks.

Wasn’t the first time he’d ever seen that other student’s handwriting -- that was an entirely laughable assumption to make, given the presence of that student in his academic life from early on -- but it was the first time he’d ever seen that handwriting in his notebook, and it stood out, where it was surrounded by the angles of his written notes.

_Training room 4 on level 35 -- I will be waiting for you._

He would never curse the distance between his favorite reading room and the rest of the school. That distance was what he looked for, and the fragrant wood-scent of softly worn pages, of many-times-creased covers, and the deep armchairs scattered into the quiet corners.

He just needed to be somewhere else right now.

Flash on a staircase of a pair of familiar faces: black hair and storm-blue eyes and chains of silver and gold links looping toward the breast pocket on his school blazer; blond hair and lake-depth eyes and freckles, all catching the sunlight and everyone else’s notice.

Which meant that he could pass on his way, faster now as he ducked into the last stairwell between him and his destination, with no one to get between him and his goal.

That one with the chains: and his own path led securely to that one’s back, to that one’s defense, but not today.

Training room 4, and the door into the anteroom hung only the slightest bit ajar.

He made sure to close it behind himself: and then it was the work of a few moments to change into workout gear, and to exchange his boots for something in which he could run for miles and miles, and -- all of this meant that he was late to this appointment.

Gladio took a deep breath and squared his shoulders and stepped on through into the actual training space: and it was always a small surprise to pass from the cramped anteroom with all its lockers and the cubbyholes for shoes, with the narrow benches for resting on pushed into the corners as though they were an afterthought, into a space of polished wooden floors and high vaulted ceilings. Windows set high up, even squares tinted alternating blue and green, casting their colors onto the shoulders of the person who was even now rolling forward.

Distant thought, disjointed, as he caught the flash of fury in those eyes, narrowed in resolve -- the same resolve he could see in every line of that extended arm, that hand curved around the elaborately wrapped hilt, the blade held ready, sunlight sparking off its deliberately dulled edge.

As abruptly as he’d gone to one knee and his extended ready stance, the person holding the sword turned his hand, turned his wrist, fluid movement all the way up to his shoulder and in a flash the weapon was back in its sheath and he was rising, he was planting his feet, as though he knew his place as a fixed point in the world.

He certainly seemed as though he were immovable, as though he were implacable, and Gladio knew men and women who stood that way: like a wall, like an impenetrable defense, all their lives laid down with pride and with a fierce joy.

Joy, too, like teeth and claws, in that sliver of a smile as Ignis unbuckled the belt that held the sword in place at his hip, and set the whole thing aside.

“It’s unkind of me,” he said, suddenly, and Gladio felt like all the world was shifting to heed those words. “For a moment there, I thought that -- that maybe you would not come.”

“I lost track of time,” Gladio heard himself answer. “There were these new books.”

“Say no more,” and the words were kind, and accompanied by a raised hand: not a fist. Fingers splayed wide, palm out and gently tilted. “I would not, of course, fault you for such a thing.”

“Still, your time’s as important as mine,” he said, and he dared to approach, at last. “And just as rationed. So I can’t go around wasting it, can I?”

He got a lopsided smile for that, and then a confused squint immediately after, as Ignis’s glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose.

Gladio grinned at the frustrated sound that slipped from that normally stern mouth, and held out his hand. “May I?”

More blinking. “What? Unless you can do something to keep them dry -- ”

“Yeah I can,” he said, and he pulled a soft white cloth out of his pocket, where he had purposely stowed it with his workout gear. Not for his use, not this square with the neatly hemmed edges: it was a little wider and a little thicker than most, and it still bore a tiny stitched flower in one corner, purple and bright.

“Gladio,” he heard Ignis say.

And he thought back to his mother, who’d taught Iris how to sew, who’d gazed at the world with keen eyes that didn’t need help except when she had to do the finest of the detail work on her own robes, the underpinnings of the armor that she wore, and that of the Shield of the King.

Thought back to the way she polished her glasses, the swift efficient motions of her hands: hands that pushed fine needles and thread through rich fabric, and hands that wielded a formidable polearm of her own design. Hands that led soldiers into war, and hands that rocked cradles in which sleeping children sheltered -- her own, and others’ as well.

So he took a moment to clean all traces of sweat and oil from the frames in his hand, from the lenses that were scratched around the edges and that refracted the warped and shifting images of the floor and his shoes and Ignis’s own bare feet.

Before returning the polished pair, he folded the cloth back into a plush cushion and wrapped it protectively around the lenses. “You maybe want to see the doctor in a few months: those glasses will be useless to you once you finish scratching them up.”

“Might as well ask the world to stand still. They are glasses. They attract dirt and dust and -- scratches,” was the answering sigh. “And mischief.”

He was going to laugh, because there was something purely careworn in those last words, but:

Ignis was taking the eyeglasses, and leaving the cloth behind in his palm.

He tried not to feel hurt. “I was -- giving you that.”

He watched, anyway, always riveted by the movements with which Ignis adjusted the fit of the frame against the bridge of his nose, against his temples, around the curve of his ear: and now he could blink freely, and -- Gladio hoped -- see clearly. 

“Best of both worlds.”

Gladio blinked. “What?”

“Lenses,” Ignis said, and tapped his finger against one angular rim. “They are as polished as though they were almost brand new -- in a frame that I’ve bent and warped to fit me, for better or worse.”

He tried to understand what was being said -- and slowly, slowly, allowed himself to hope. 

“There you are,” Ignis said: sweet slow smile. 

He ducked his head. Felt the flush rise on his cheeks. “I -- it was a small thing. Polishing your glasses. This thing that I’m trying to give you.”

“It’s not a small thing,” and there was a chiding note, only one, in those words, gone in the next breath. “You have clear intentions in doing this for me, in giving this to me.”

“You need to see the world clearly -- however you do it.” Gladio looked up. Decided to speak. “Not just with your eyes. Your mind, too. If you’ll let me, I want to do what I can to help you with that. I know there’re other things we need to deal with but -- what I have, what I can give, what I can place in your hands, that’s for you. From me. I can give you that, and I -- I can try to ask you to understand where the limits are. Just so we’re on the same page.”

“I think we might have always been,” was the quiet rejoinder, but --

And that was Ignis, moving: like the way he’d snapped out his arm to finish the form he’d been working through, decisive and swift. One moment he was an arm’s length away; the next, he was in Gladio’s personal space, almost close enough for their chests to touch. “Is this all right?”

“More than all right,” he said, and heard his words, breathless, in the scant spaces between them. “You’re always welcome where you are right now.”

“I will always ask,” was the soft reply. “Because that is who I am. That is what I have, what I can give, what I can place in your hands. That places the limits between us. You ask me to understand; so I ask of you the exact same thing.”

And that, too, reminded him of his mother.

It made a certain kind of sense, sad and, in its many ways, worthwhile.

“Yeah,” Gladio said, after a moment.

“Keep this,” and Ignis’s hands were warm around his, and one elegant finger was brushing across purple stitches. “Until I can clean my hands and I can take it from you, and give it the respect it deserves.”

He smoothed the white cloth again and tucked it back into his pocket.

And took Ignis’s hands, fingers intertwining into his, and as he thought about bending his head and closing the distance to his cheek -- Ignis moved his head, just a little, just to the left.

Eyes wide open, Gladio kissed him for the first time, chapped lips brushing against his own.

**Author's Note:**

> ninemoons42 on Tumblr: [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


End file.
